As every security professional quickly learns, trusted relationships must be managed. And digital certificates – a standardized, encrypted exchange of credentials between two endpoints – are the medium for managing trust online for more than two decades.
Digital certificates aren't particularly complex from a technical perspective. But they do sport a built-in expiration date that if ignored can bring operations to a screeching halt. While most users manage their certificates manually, a host of products and services have emerged to simplify the task. More on this in a minute.
Digital certificates originally started to keep buyers and sellers in sync in early e-commerce applications. But certificates have evolved in the past few years as essential for all websites, thanks to a change in Google's search algorithms that give greater preference to URLs using digital certificates. Sites with digital certificates show up in the browser bar as https://; a small green padlock graphic shows up in the URL bar of some Web browsers for TLS-protected sites. Non-certificated sites render their address with plain, old http://.
In addition to Google search changes, the Internet of Things (IoT) is also making the market more active. Digital certificates are increasingly being tapped by organizations to better secure IoT's galaxies of instrumented, automated endpoints, experts say.
"Every IoT device needs a certificate to pair up with the mothership that [shows] all the rights and protections are there," notes David Collinson, senior director and analyst at Gartner.
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